Model and Strategy
This project builds on the initial success of the Ready4K texting program in improving parent engagement and home learning practices. The project will meaningfully advance the program by linking local resources to the curriculum and by creating a technology strategy for improving the texting platform and scaffolding additional resources through multiple technologies. Parenting has been notoriously difficult to affect even by well meaning and well-resourced programs. Part of the reason for this failure has been that existing programs do not address behavioral barriers to parenting. Even when parents want to change, they do not, due to demands on their time and habits they have developed. Ready4K has shown that parents do change their practices when provided with small bits of easily operationalized information over long periods of time. The power of this form of parent education has the potential to close the substantial gaps in the home learning environments of young children.
Impact
Ready4K aims to reach over 250k families in the 2016-17 School Year and 500k in 2017-18. The organization is in discussions about program adoption with organizations in a number of additional states and countries (including, Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, and South Africa). To date, the organization has not pursued any expansion opportunities. All of the growth is in response to incoming inquiries about program adoption, partially driven by media coverage such as this New York Times article and this Huffington Post Article, the latter of which Chelsea Clinton posted on her Facebook page.
Leadership
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Susanna Leob
Director
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Ben York
Executive Director